Howdy folks, We know we’re a little late, but Happy New Year! We know we’ve been quiet since we released Episode 1, and we’re sorry to have kept you all waiting. But we’re back and working hard as ever on improving Episode 1, as well as working on some other things that we know you’ll be happy to hear about! So onwards with the game update--

Wild Season v1.0.1.4

Unfortunately the release of Episode 1 was less stellar than we expected, with a lot more problems than we would have liked. Due to this, over the Christmas break our awesome developers did a lot of refactoring and optimising the code and structure of the game. That means the game should be considerably more stable, and most of the niggling issues are now fixed. Some of the rewritten items that should now work flawlessly (at least they do so in testing) are:

• Fixed some NPC (non-playable characters) schedules
• Fixed farming tutorial bug where user cannot progress if they decide to pick up the weeds
• Fixed animal movements
• Fixed barn and coop animal information
• Fixed storage (chest, bin, freezer) visual problem, where items suddenly disappear when being stored
• Fixed map loop in mine area
• Fixed Edward part during Summer investigations

As the saying goes, fix one bug and 177 more bugs will appear; because of that, our devs discovered a few more bugs while they were doing the fixes. So if you’ve stumbled upon the following bugs, have no fear, our devs are working on them:

• Repeating story and events dialogues
• Some testimonials are not being recorded properly in the notebook
• The fishing pole bug
• A delay in round 2 at the dog race
• Pesky tutorial bug

And as always, if you find any new bugs that aren’t on this list, we’d greatly appreciate it if you could send us a report at http://wildseasonthegame.com/feedback.html (We’re also looking to shift over to Bugzilla so we can have more transparency in bug fixing and the community can see what’s being done, but we need to do so in a way that doesn’t impact our overall workflow.)

Why the refactoring?

The refactoring was also important for our plans moving forward. Although we’re eager to launch Episode 2, it was imperative for us to make sure that what we had released was stable before continuing. We also took the opportunity in the refactor to optimize the game for other platforms, including mobile. We’re not making any promises yet, but if all goes smoothly we’ll be able to begin releasing on other platforms soon. HOWEVER, in the event that anything goes wrong or requires significant attention, the releases to other platforms will be shelved in favor of completing Episode 2, as that is our present priority. Having said that, we’re hopeful that the extra time we took to improve the structural integrity of the game will pay off, allowing us to bring the game to mobile with little effort. So fingers crossed!

Calling the cavalry

Finally, with the effort to try and speed things along, we’re officially going to be opening up a call for volunteers on various fronts, including development, engine/tools development, voice acting, translation/localization, mobile porting in Unity, and story encoders. While we have enough money to finish the game, there is still a lot of work to be done. We understand that a lot of you are starting to get impatient, and scaling up at this stage is something we just can’t afford. :( We know that many of you have been here for us from the beginning, and love Wild Season as much as we do and want to see it finished, and that is why we are asking for your kind assistance so that we can make it happen. On that note, we know that beggars can’t be choosers, but in the interest of avoiding delays and giving you guys the best quality game possible, we’re only looking for volunteers who have real commitment and a solid background in the field they’re volunteering for. All volunteers should be prepared to submit a portfolio or examples of their work in their chosen field, and should be willing to sign a non-disclosure agreement. While most of the positions are self-explanatory, the story encoder position requires some basic storytelling/game design background, as the volunteers will not only be copying the script into the game, but also blocking out the character movements. As such, understanding basic storytelling and visual implementation is necessary. More complete guidelines and details on how to sign up as a volunteer to follow! For now, you can keep watching our Facebook page and our Twitter account. For any concerns, as always you can send an email anytime! That’s all for now, but we will try to update you guys again really soon. Until then, we hope you enjoy the latest build of Wild Season!